John Leech, His Life and Work, Vol. 2 [of 2]

William Powell Frith

John Leech, His Life and Work, Vol. 2 [of 2]

CHAPTER I.

"PUNCH."

In the year 1841 I exhibited a picture at the Suffolk Street Gallery, and I recollect accidentally overhearing fragments of a conversation between a certain Joe Allen and a brother member of the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street. Allen's picture happened to hang near mine, and we were both "touching up" our productions. Joe Allen was the funny man of the society, and, though he startled me a little, he did not surprise me by a loud and really good imitation of the peculiar squeak of Punch.

"Look out, my boy," he said to his friend, "for the first number. We" (I suppose he was a member of the first staff) "shall take the town by storm. There is no mistake about it. We have so-and-so" – naming some well-known men – "for writers; Hine, Kenny Meadows, young Leech, and a lot more first-rate illustrators," etc.

Whether Allen's friend took his advice and bought the first number of Punch, which appeared in the following July, I know not; but I bought a copy, and remember my disappointment at finding Leech conspicuous by his absence from the pages. In the hope of finding him in the second issue, I went to the shop where I had bought the first. The shopman met my request for the second number of Punch, as well as I can recollect, in the following words:

"What paper, sir? Oh, Punch! Yes, I took a few of the first; but it's no go. You see, they billed it about a good deal" (how well I recollect that expression!), "so I wanted to see what it was like. It won't do; it's no go."

I have been told that, like most newspapers, Punch had some difficulty in keeping upon his legs in his first efforts to move; but as those elegant members, so exquisitely drawn by Tenniel, have supported the famous hunchback for nearly half a century, there is no need for his friends' anxiety as to his future movements.

Though Leech had engaged himself to the then proprietors of Punch as one of the illustrators of the paper, it seems strange that his first contribution did not appear till the 7th of August, and in the fourth number, and stranger still that its appearance should have damaged the paper. Under the heading of "Foreign Affairs," the artist represents groups of foreigners such as may be seen any day in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square. The reader is told in a footnote that the plate does not represent foreign gentlemen, an unnecessary intimation to anyone who knows a foreign gentleman.

It is said that this engraving sent down the circulation of Punch to an alarming point. I confess my inability to understand this, and would rather attribute the decadence to some other cause, contemporary with the production of "Foreign Affairs." The drawing is somewhat hard upon the foreign frequenters of the purlieus of Leicester Square, and would only have been more acceptable to John Bull on that account. By Leech's non-appearance in Punch for many months after "Foreign Affairs" was published, one is driven to the conclusion that the managers had little faith in him as an attraction. The second volume contains very few of Leech's designs, while it bristles with inferior work.

My own admiration for Leech's genius, so constantly roused by his works, with which I was familiar, created a great desire for his acquaintance; but being perfectly unknown at that time as an artist, and knowing none of Leech's friends, I began to despair of the realization of my wishes, when accident helped me.

A Scottish painter – a Highlander and fierce Jacobite – named McIan, who was also an actor and friend of Macready, to whose theatrical company he was attached, lived with his wife, an accomplished artist, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Gordon Square. Calling one morning to see Mrs. McIan, I found her in her studio, not, as usual, hard at work at her own easel, but superintending the labours of a pupil, who was hard at work at another; and the pupil, a tall, slim, and remarkably handsome young man, was John Leech.

I made some remark about the different method in which he was employed to that with which he was familiar. I forget what he was copying – some still life, I think.

"I like painting much better than what I have to grind at day after day, if I could only do it," said Leech; "but it's so confoundedly difficult, you know, and requires such a lot of patience."

I fancy I thought his efforts in oil-painting on that occasion very promising; but the exigencies of his position quite prevented the unceasing devotion to the study of painting which is required before any success can be assured.

Leech was once heard to say that he would rather be the painter of a really good picture than the producer of any number of the "kind of things" he did. I, for one, am very thankful that he never did produce a good picture, for he would have been tempted to repeat the success, to the loss of numbers of delightful sketches.

Mrs. McIan appeared to think that Leech would soon cease to draw for Punch; indeed, she doubted, as did many others, that Punch would long succeed in attracting the public; and I joined her in the hope – rather hypocritically, I fear – that her young friend would persevere in mastering the difficulty of the technicalities of oil-painting, and thus place himself amongst the best painters of the country. Leech had taken many lessons from Mrs. McIan, and that lady seemed convinced that he had but to persevere and the difficulties would fall before him, as, to use her own figure, the walls of Jericho fell before the sound of the trumpet. Ah, perseverance! "there's the rub."

From the time of my introduction to Leech I became gradually very intimate with him, and the more I knew of his nature, the more I became convinced that he totally lacked the disposition for continuous, steady, mechanical industry necessary for success in painting. He constantly ridiculed the care spent on the details in pictures; finish, in his opinion, was so much waste of time. "When you can see what a man intends to convey in his picture, you have got all he wants, and all you ought to wish for; all elaboration of an idea after the idea is comprehensible is so much waste of time" – this was his constant cry, a little contradicted by the fact that he as constantly tried to paint his ideas, but in a fitful and perfunctory manner.

I can imagine the enthusiasm that was lighted up in Leech upon his first sight of one of our annual exhibitions. After a visit to one of them he was known to have gone home, and getting out easel, canvas, and colours, he would set to work in a fury of enthusiasm, which evaporated at the encounter of the first technical difficulty. He used to take pleasure in watching my own attempts at painting, and I remember on one occasion, when I was finishing a rather elaborate piece of work, he said:

"Ah, my Frith, I wasn't created to do that sort of thing! I should never have patience for it."

He was right, and, happily for the world, he became convinced that, even if he had the power to fully "carry out" – as we call it – one of his drawings into a completed oil picture, the time required would have deprived us of immortal sketches; and though he undoubtedly "left off where difficulties begin" – as I once heard a painter, who was exasperated at Leech's sneers at his manipulation, say to him – he has left behind him work which will continue to delight succeeding generations so long as wit, humour, character and beauty are appreciated – that is to say, so long as human nature endures.

I feel I ought to apologize for what I am about to tell, because it has nothing to do with my hero beyond the fact of its occurrence having taken place on the memorable morning when I first had the happiness of meeting him.

I have said that McIan was a Scotchman, a Highlander of the clan McIan, and a worshipper of Charles Stuart, whose usual cognomen, the Pretender, I should have been sorry to have used in the presence of my Jacobite friend. As Leech left the room to go to his "grind," as he called his woodwork, McIan entered, and we were discussing Leech's prospects when McIan's servant – an old, hard-featured Scotchwoman – hurried into the room, and, in an awe-stricken voice, said:

"Sir – sir, here's the Preences!"

The words were scarcely out of her mouth, when two gentlemen entered – tall, rather distinguished but melancholy, looking young men. No sooner did McIan and his wife catch sight of them, than, without a word, they both dropped upon their knees, and while the lady kissed the hands of one of the gentlemen, her husband paid a similar attention to the hands of the other. I was holding my hat, and I remember I dropped it in my astonishment, for I was not aware that I was in the presence of the last of the Stuarts; or that these two young men claimed to be the great-grandsons of the hero of Culloden, and amongst a large section of Scotchmen, and not a few Englishmen, had their claim allowed. Anyone curious about this delusion can read for himself how it was dispelled, but the men themselves implicitly believed in their royal descent. They are both dead now. I once saw one of them again at a garden-party at Chelsea Hospital, where his likeness to the Stuarts was the talk of the company. It was certainly striking.

It is a melancholy task to me to try to recall the social scenes in which Leech so often figured – sad indeed to think how few of his friends, more intimate with him than I, now remain amongst us! Though Leech very seldom illustrated any ideas but his own, I can recall an example or two to the contrary; and still oftener have I seen, by the sparkle of his eye, that something occurring in conversation had suggested a "cut."

I think it was Dickens who said that a big cock-pheasant rising in covert under one's nose was like a firework let off in that locality. Elsewhere we have Leech's rendering of the idea.

When cards, or some other way of getting rid of time after dinner, had been proposed, I have heard Leech say:

"Oh, bother cards! Let us have conversation."

And talk it was, often good talk; but Leech was more a listener than a partaker. Not that he could not talk, and admirably; but he was always on the watch for subjects which he hoped something in conversation might suggest.

Leech's mental condition was certainly deeply tinged with the sadness so common to men who possess wit and humour to a high degree. He sang well, but his songs were all of a melancholy character, and very difficult to get from him. Indeed, the only one I can remember, and that but partially, was something about "King Death," with allusions to a beverage called "coal-black wine," which that potentate was supposed to drink. As I write I can see the dear fellow's melancholy face, with his eyes cast up to the ceiling, where Dickens said the song was written in ghostly characters which none but Leech could read.

I may give another example – rare, no doubt – of Leech's having used a suggested subject. Many years ago my brother-in-law, long since dead, took a party of friends to the Derby. They drove, or, rather, were driven, down to Epsom, the usual post-boy being recommended as a careful, steady driver – a character very desirable, considering the crowded state of the road, more especially on the return journey. The post-boy quite realized all that was said of him as the party went to the course, but when the time came for departure he was found, after considerable searching, to be as nearly dead-drunk as possible. What was to be done? The man could scarcely stand; his driving was, of course, out of the question.

"Well," said my brother-in-law to his friends, "if you will trust yourselves to me, I will ride and drive you back;" and, after tying the post-boy on to the carriage, where he soon fell fast asleep, my brother mounted and drove his party safely home.

This I thought a good subject for Leech, and I suggested it to him. He smiled faintly, and said not a word. Very nearly a year after I had told him of the incident, as I was walking with him one day, he said:

"By the way, Frith, are you going to use the subject you mentioned to me of the drunken post-boy and your brother-in-law?"

"I? No," said I; "it's more in your way than mine."

"Then I'll do it next week."

He was as good as his word.

Nothing could be less like my brother-in-law than the delightful "swell" who is driving home some charming women, who are, however, left to our imagination; and as to the post-boy, the artist has awoke him to some purpose. What could surpass that drunken smile?

Long, long ago there might have been seen on the sands at Ramsgate two stuffed figures, the size of life, intended to represent soldiers; for they were bedecked with the red coat, cap, and trousers of the ordinary private. The clothes were simply stuffed out into something resembling human forms, but the effect, as may be supposed, was ludicrous in the extreme. They were the work of a professor of archery, who supplied his customers with bows and arrows, with which the archer showed how seldom he could hit the target made by the two soldiers. Leech and I watched the shooting for some time, till the little sketch-book was produced, and Leech made a rapid drawing of the two soldiers, afterwards to figure in an inimitable cut in Punch.

A young lady is seen bathing with her aunt, whose attention she is directing to the two stuffed figures. The aunt is short-sighted, and the girl is wickedly pretending that the figures are live officers, watching the bathers. The aunt says, "They may be officers, but they are not gentlemen," etc.

I am sure that Leech never used a model, in the sense that the model is commonly used by artists, for the thousands of human beings made immortal by his genius; but that he made numberless sketches for backgrounds, detail of dresses, landscapes, foregrounds, and bits of character caught from unconscious sitters, there can be no doubt. How wonderful was the memory, how sensitive the mental organization, that could retain and reproduce every variety of type, every variety of beauty and character!

CHAPTER II.

CARTOONS

As I fancy I am one of the few of Leech's friends who have figured personally in Punch, I may be excused for the egotism of the following:

About the year 1852 I began the first of a series of pictures from modern life, then quite a novelty in the hands of anyone who could paint tolerably. When the picture which was called "Many Happy Returns of the Day" (a birthday subject, in which the health of the little heroine of the day is being drunk) was finished, Leech came to see it, and expressed his satisfaction on finding an artist who could leave what he called "mouldy costumes" for the habits and manners of everyday life. As he was speaking, two of my brother artists, whose practice was on different lines to mine, called, and saw my picture for the first time. They both looked attentively at it, and the longer they looked – judging from their faces – the less they liked it. I shall not forget Leech's expression when I gave him a sort of questioning look as to the correctness of his judgment.

"Well, what do you think of the picture?" said Leech to one of the painters.

"Well, really I don't know what to think," was the reply.

It never occurred to me that the incident was one likely to serve my friend for a drawing; lively was my surprise, and great was my pleasure, therefore, when I saw myself "immortalized for ever," as my old master used to say, in the pages of Punch.

In this drawing may be seen a striking proof of the avoidance of personality which always distinguished Leech. I cannot see my own back, but I have been assured by those who have had that privilege that there is a dashing, not to say aristocratic, character about Jack Armstrong to which I have no claim. While Messrs. Potter and Feeble are quite curiously unlike the persons they are supposed to represent – neither of my high art friends wore beards – yet the attitudes of the men were exactly reproduced; while the background, with armour, oak-cabinet, etc., for which no sketch was taken, was a perfectly correct representation of my old painting-room.

In one of my autumnal holidays Leech stayed a few days with me. He had not been well; picking up "a thousand stones in a thousand hours," to which he likened his unceasing work, had begun to tell upon him; and in reply to my warning, that, for his own sake, to say nothing of the interests of Punch, he should husband his strength – for, I added, "If anything happened to you, who are 'the backbone of Punch,' what would become of the paper?" – I can see his smile as I hear him say, "Don't talk such rubbish! backbone of Punch, indeed! Why, bless your heart! there isn't a fellow at work upon the paper that doesn't think that of himself, and with about as much right and reason as I should. Punch would get on well enough without me, or any of those who think themselves of such importance."

Among the many admirable qualities that adorned the character of John Leech his modesty was remarkable; he thought little or nothing of his own work. "Talk of drawing, my dear fellow," he once said to me, "what is my drawing compared to Tenniel's? Look at the way that chap can draw a boot; why, I couldn't do it to save my life."

Though Leech in his modesty chose to ignore the fact, it was no less a fact that for nearly a quarter of a century he was the leading spirit of Punch. "Think," said Thackeray, "what a number of Punch would be without a drawing by Leech in it!"

In addition to the wonderful political cartoons, Leech contributed more than three thousand illustrations of life and manners to the paper; and it is said – I know not how truly – that he received from first to last more than £40,000 for his contributions to Punch alone. If he did, what did he do with the money? That he was in no way extravagant I know, and that he was frequently in dire straits after his connection with Punch I also know. Let my reader imagine what pecuniary trouble must have been to this man, whose mind was racked by the constantly recurring demands for intellectual work such as Leech supplied week after week, and often day after day! Did he lend or give away his hardly-earned money? Did he accept bills for so-called friends, and find that he had to meet them? Leech was one of the most open-hearted and generous of men, an easy victim to a plausible tale of real or fictitious distress. I suppose we shall never know why a man who made so large an income, who had not a large family to absorb much of it, and who never lived expensively, should have died comparatively poor. Let me leave these painful considerations and "pursue the triumph and partake the gale" of the artist's glorious career.

Between Cruikshank and Leech there existed little sympathy and less intimacy. The extravagant caricature that pervades so much of Cruikshank's work, and from which Leech was entirely free, blinded him a little to the great merit of Cruikshank's serious work. I was very intimate with "Immortal George," as he was familiarly called, and I was much surprised by the coolness with which he received my enthusiastic praise of Leech.

"Yes, yes," said George, "very clever. The new school, you see. Public always taken with novelty."

For the larger part of fifty-seven years Cruikshank told me he had been in the habit of drinking wine and spirits, often a great deal too much of both; but from his fifty-seventh birthday to his seventy-fifth, when he lectured me for taking a single glass of sherry, he had devoted himself to strict teetotalism, the interests of which he advocated by tongue, brush, and etching-needle.

Unlike Leech, Cruikshank was a painter, and the last years of his life were spent in painting a huge picture, or, rather, a series of pictures upon one canvas, which he called "The Worship of Bacchus." From this work he executed a large engraving, a proof of which he presented to me, telling me to study it well and I should see what dire results might arise from drinking a glass of sherry. Like most proselytes, Cruikshank carried his faith in his creed to the verge of absurdity, and sometimes beyond it; but in the "Worship of Bacchus," and more powerfully still in a series of etchings called "The Bottle," he gave his tragic power full play, and produced scenes and incidents in which the consequences of "drink" are portrayed – now with pathos, now with the terrible retribution that often ends the drunkard's career in madness.

In one of the large cartoons in Punch Leech used the awful figure of "Fagin in the Condemned Cell" (one of Cruikshank's finest illustrations to "Oliver Twist"), changing him into King Louis Philippe. That sovereign was always somewhat of a red rag to Leech, as many cuts, in which the king is turned into ridicule, prove; and when the crash of 1848 came, Leech received the fugitive with a shower of drawings, culminating in the tragic figure exiled and in the condemned cell. The student of Leech does not require to be told that the artist was as great in the tragedies of life as he was when he shot the follies as they flew about him, or when he touched so caressingly the beauty of childhood and of women.

During the Crimean War, when such fearful news came to us of the sufferings of our soldiers during the inclement winter of 1854-55, the Emperor of Russia is said to have invoked the aid of Generals January and February in our ruin. Those officers certainly destroyed many of our men, but one of them laid his icy hand upon the man who had called him for so different a purpose. Never can I forget the impression that Leech's drawing of the Emperor's death-bed made upon me! There lay the Czar, a noble figure in death, as he was in life, and by his side a stronger King than he – a bony figure, in General's uniform, snow-besprinkled, who "beckons him away." Of all Leech's serious work, this seems to me the finest example. Think how savage Gillray or vulgar Rowlandson would have handled such a theme! – the Emperor would have been caricatured into a repulsive monster, and Death would have lost his terrors. Moreover, neither of those artists was capable of conceiving the subject.

To show the infinite variety of Leech's powers, I may draw attention in this place to another of the political cartoons.

The uneasiness created in this country by what was called the "Papal Aggression" always seemed to me as absurd and unfounded as it has since proved to have been. I remember asking Cardinal Manning, then Archbishop of Westminster by order of the Pope, for his autograph. He wrote his name for me, but when I asked him to add his title, he smiled and said, "I dare not do that; I might be sent to prison if I wrote my Popish title."

Lord John Russell was in power at that time, and was of course very active in the crusade against the Catholics. The Cardinal in England was Wiseman; and Leech drew Lord John as a street boy, running away from the Cardinal's door, after chalking "No Popery" upon it. Perfect in workmanship, and perfect in idea, is this admirable drawing.

I may note here one very bad consequence of the "Papal Aggression" – namely, the secession of Richard Doyle from the Punch staff. Doyle was a Catholic; it was therefore impossible for him to remain amongst men who, by pen and pencil, opposed what was called the audacious attempt to "tithe and toll in our dominions." It was a pity, for Doyle was, next to Leech, by far the strongest man on the staff of Punch artists – quaintly humorous, and full of a delicate fancy, but without the broad views of life or the grasp of character that distinguished Leech. Of course, as personality was the essence of the political cartoons, the use of it was unavoidable; but Leech managed to be personal without being offensive to the chief actor, unless, as in the case of Louis Philippe and a few others, he considered that their escapades deserved severe castigation; he then took good care to apply the whip with a will. Lord Russell, in his "Recollections," speaks of the "No Popery" satire as "a fair hit."

In many of the political cartoons official personages are represented as boys, well-behaved or ill-behaved, obstinate or stupid, or both, in the work appointed for them. For example, when Sir Robert Peel resigned, in 1846, Lord John Russell figures as page-boy applying for the vacant place. The Queen looks the button boy up and down, and then says, "I fear, John, you are not strong enough for the situation."